Mark Hughes accused referee Mike Dean of lacking common sense and ruining the game as Harry Redknapp’s Tottenham revival continued.

Darren Bent’s double lifted Tottenham out of the bottom three for the first time this season, but the talking point was the dismissals of Gelsen Fernandes and Richard Dunne for Manchester City and Benoit Assou-Ekotto for Spurs.

Fernandes and Assou-Ekotto were sent off for two yellow cards and Dunne for a professional foul, but Hughes thought Dean was overzealous in torrential rain, as City crashed to a third successive Premier League defeat.

Hughes said: “What the referee hasn’t understood was that there was a big crowd wanting to see a good game of football, but he wasn’t prepared to take the conditions into account and give players the benefit of the doubt.

Fernandes’s first booking was valid, but the second one was harsh

Mark Hughes

“Fernandes’s first booking was valid, but the second one was harsh. David Bentley nicked the ball away, he wasn’t in full control and he has gone down. There was not a great deal of contact.

“Dunny’s dismissal was another one where there was a coming together of legs and bodies with two players running at speed.

“Once again, you would think the referee would use a bit of common sense, but he was not prepared to do that at any stage today and it has cost us badly because, when we had 11 players, we were very much in control and creating chances.”

Not surprisingly, Redknapp was less concerned about the referee after a fourth win in five games since taking over.

But he said: “Anyone would think it had been a right old dust-up with three red cards but it wasn’t – there wasn’t a bad tackle in the game.”

Harry Houdini was his name after the great escapes against Arsenal and Liverpool, Harry Potter after the magical football against Dinamo Zagreb but, after yesterday, maybe Harry Worth should be the new moniker.

Tottenham, not long ago a crisis club, are now only a point behind City, such is the topsy-turvy nature of the season. And that is not great news for Hughes as he flies out to Abu Dhabi this week to meet City’s new owner Sheikh Mansour.

He is 12 points worse off than previous manager Sven-Goran Eriksson after the same amount of games, but City sources stressed there is no question of Hughes being under pressure and that this week’s meeting is to talk over plans for the January transfer window.

Indeed, the club’s chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, dined at Hughes’ house on Saturday night as they talked of future plans.

City were good value for their 15th-minute lead after Robinho had started and finished the move for his eighth goal of the season.

But Fernandes’s dismissal for two bookings in nine minutes – the first on Luka Modric and the second on Bentley – changed the game.

And it got worse for City when Dunne gifted Bent the equaliser on the half-hour, following up his embarrassing own-goals at Newcastle and Bolton by messing up a routine chest trap and clearance from Modric’s long ball and Bent made the most of it.

Dunne’s day plumbed new depths when he was sent off for knocking over Bent as they chased a through-ball in the 83rd minute, with Dean judging him to be the last defender.

But by then Bent had added his second, scoring with an angled drive off the post after Jermaine Jenas helped on Tom Huddlestone’s pass.

Bent, the odd man out last season when Dimitar Berbatov, Robbie Keane and Jermain Defoe were at the club, now has more goals this term – 11 – than all of them.

Seven of them have come since Redknapp’s arrival and he now has two more than Berbatov and Keane put together.

Redknapp added: “It’s all about confidence, he’s playing every week now. It’s important to get off the bottom. Two weeks ago we had two points. That could have been scary if we hadn’t made an immediate improvement.”

Assou-Ekotto, booked for kicking the ball away in the second half, was sent off for a foul on Pablo Zabaleta.